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Re: What have you learnt today?

Originally Posted by JohannBessler

You two have very valid points. I guess "the hospital" really doesn't make sense, does it?

One thing I can see about Canada is that it seems to have characteristics of both influences. For example, Canadians use the "flavour" etc., spelling, but don't use the linking "r" that the Brits do--"Cuber and America, Vodker and Gin, Laura Norder", etc.

Here's another one: In the US, the 1st floor represents the floor that sits on the ground; in the UK, the 1st floor represents the level directly above it.

What do the Canadians use?

Originally Posted by belamo

Are they really that Chinese in the US: so what does "ground floor" mean to them? "Basement"?

The Japanese language does the same as well. I could be wrong but I think the word for the 1st floor (as Americans would think of it) is more like "ground floor", and then 1st floor 2nd floor translate more like "storey", implying being up from ground floor.

Re: What have you learnt today?

Originally Posted by xbuzzerx

The Japanese language does the same as well. I could be wrong but I think the word for the 1st floor (as Americans would think of it) is more like "ground floor", and then 1st floor 2nd floor translate more like "storey", implying being up from ground floor.

Oh, that's so enlightening

In BCN the land has always been so scarce, and the developers so greedy, that XIXth century type of buildings were reshaped, during the second third of the XXth century, as monster wedding cakes with basement, ground floor, mezzanine, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and up to sixth or seventh floor, and then, on top, penthouse, "overpenthouse", first penthouse and second penthouse.

Re: What have you learnt today?

They would, but no one knows which floor is the 13th because of the floor-numbering system. They have two 12th floors or two 14th floors, which causes no end of problems with the mail.

Besides, in Spain everyone uses Roman numerals but no one is taught them, because the government doesn't want anyone to know they might live or work on the 13th floor. Happily for the government, Roman numerals printed on elevator buttons have to be so small no one can read them.

So the 13th-floor conundrum is avoided.

I don't seek to get enlightenment from JUB, but you can always find it, occasionally, more or less hidden, anywhere

Re: What have you learnt today?

Some esteemed British author believed that the American/Canadian system actually makes more sense.

This time, I agree. 1st floor means the first floor that sits on the ground. The second floor, of course, is the second one that sits on the ground, and so on.

The European system of the first floor meaning the "second floor up" doesn't really seem logical to me,

I've wondered something. Say, you plan on buying a house. A two-story house in the US means exactly that--two floors; the first floor (story) sitting on the ground, second floor(story) the one above it.

How do Europeans refer to this kind of dwelling? How would a European refer to a one-story bungalow?

Floor is what is built over the ground. Your system would then "make better sense" only when a "ground floor" is built over a basement floor, wouldn't it?

As for your question, we call it a two-floor/storey/whatever house: ground floor and first floor... over a basement

Re: What have you learnt today?

Originally Posted by belamo

Now get steamrolled.

However, I would never be so daring as to state that nobody could ever sing better than a certain one some particular composition.

Oh dear lawrd. The errors of my ways! I'm a fool! Beautiful!
So point taken, what I should have said was: "Hitherto, I've yet to hear someone sing " Caruso " as good as Luciano Pavarotti."
Oh the limitations of my prose!

Re: What have you learnt today?

Originally Posted by Sigma-taylor-E

Oh dear lawrd. The errors of my ways! I'm a fool! Beautiful!
So point taken, what I should have said was: "Hitherto, I've yet to hear someone sing that totally übercrappy 'Caruso' as good as Luciano Pavarotti."
Oh, the limitations of my prose!

FIFY.

Oh, the limitations of your own understanding, no matter the quality of anyone else's English prose